Attend our February editionof the PaaS Partner Community Webcast live on February 28th 2018 at 16:30 CET. In the webcast John Ceccarelli and Angelo Santagata will update you on the Visual Builder Cloud Service and how to extend SaaS.

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Mon, 12 Feb 2018 16:56:32 +0000Liz Lumleyhttps://girl-disrupted.com/go/work/well-actually-navigating-the-future-of-our-industry-in-the-age-of-metoo/A few weeks ago the Financial Timesexposed the story regarding the treatment of women at a charitable fundraiser held at the tony Dorchester Hotel in London. The women at the party told tales of being groped, plied with alcohol and being propositioned for sex. Having spent over 20 years working in banking and technology, and having been to my fair share of parties where men outnumber women (by a wide margin) nothing that was exposed at that party particularly surprised me.

I’ve been to an aftershow party, sponsored by a large financial technology firm, where men were grabbing women out of their chairs, dragging them on to the dancefloor to struggle with a gauntlet of hands and sweaty bodies. There used to be a well-known journalist in this space who was known collectively as ‘the ass grabber’. I, myself, have been cornered at a work dinner by a man who had had a bit too much to drink.

We’ve all been there. But this story, this particular party, haunted me.

What made this particular charity bash grab so many headlines was not the treatment of the various women who attending this party – but the way in which the women all ended up there.

The President’s Club, which had been going for over 30 years, was a charity fundraiser where businesses, some FTSE 100 companies, could buy tables and bid on various items – such as tea with the Governor of the Bank of England (something the B of E now says they never agreed to) or a night at a strip club.

The event was men-only.

The women were hired.

The women were hired from a hostess company – around a 100 or so who matched the ‘tall, thin and pretty’ requirements. They were told to wear black underwear and sexy shoes, kitted out in identical revealing dresses and then paraded on stage in front of the men before joining their tables to help fetch drinks, and according to the FT article, ‘hold hands’ with several of the men in attendance.

All of this happened at a well-known London hotel. The men who attended were senior figures at various corporations, a member of parliament attended and a well-known mainstream comedian – David Walliams – entertained the crowd.

Some of the women who were hired as hostess, noted the FT, were excited that they had been offered jobs at the companies where several of the men worked. I don’t know, maybe these guys didn’t work at firms with HR departments? Maybe they worked at companies that sold ‘sexy shoes’ and needed staff that actually wore them? Or maybe they were incapable of reading CVs from women who were not wearing black underwear?

I would love to know the percentage of female leadership at any of the companies that attended this event. I am going to take a guess and say it is probably pretty low.

All of this happened in London in 2018. And that is what has haunted me about this story, so much. This event happened at a time when I, personally, get told ‘we are all equal now’ or ‘we should all aim for diversity of thought’. This event happened today.

100 years after women got the right to vote in the United Kingdom.

Almost 40 years after the election of the first female Prime Minister in the UK.

Five years after Laura Bates started the Everyday Sexism Project, to record the stories of ordinary women as a rebuttal to all those who claim ‘but we are all equal’.

Four months after Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor unveiled months of investigative research in the New York Times showing how a culture of entitlement and power protected the sexual predator Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein at the expense of several women in the entertainment industry.

One month after Time Magazine named ‘The Silence Breakers’ – women who started making noise and speaking out about sexual harassment and abuse – as Person of the Year.

The President’s Club held a party where women were hired, paraded in front of and used as sexual bait, for a group of rich and powerful men. The event was described as ‘politically incorrect’.

All of this happened in 2018, in a Western democracy and a free market economy. And there are still those who look at this event (the organisation has since been dissolved) who say:

‘Well, actually…our team didn’t see anything improper.’

‘Well, actually…nothing went on there that doesn’t happen at a rugby club dinner.’

Well, actually…I left early.’

‘Well, actually…isn’t it a shame that the charities are missing out?’

‘Well, actually…many of the women knew what the party was like and used it to their advantage.’ (note – the women hired for this party did not do anything wrong).

This was just one event – one incident. But what is happening, today in 2018, is not about one event. It is not about one incident. It never is and it never was. It is about an entire culture of entitlement and power that keeps one half of the world’s population in a subservient position. It stunts their ability to make money. It denies them access to networks and groups that could lead to promotion and advancement. It makes them complicit in a society that tells them they should accept the sexual abuse and harassment that happens, as shown by #MeToo, to women every day.

In our world, the FinTech world, it is not uncommon to find startups with all male teams, management and boards that are all men, panels at events (or even entire events) that are overwhelmingly male. When this is questioned, the response is:

‘Well, actually…we just pick the best people…’

I have sat and listened to dozens of stories from female startup founders who talk about meeting an investor for possible funding – only to be met with unwanted sexual attention. Or they get asked about their ‘fertility’ or dismissed outright as being too cautious or for developing a female-friendly product the investor doesn’t understand. According to Pitchbook, women only account for 2% of venture capital funding for their startups? The response is:

‘Well, actually, we just don’t see enough female founders…’

Friends pass around videos and pictures from LinkedIn and Twitter advertising a ‘Miss Blockchain’ beauty pageant or showing a young woman sitting on the lap of a much older man at an industry event – with the cries of ‘WTF?’ – comforting ourselves with female solidarity.

‘Well, actually, this is just a bit of fun…’

‘Well, actually, I have never heard of #MeToo…’

Well, actually…I have had enough. And so have many others. So what do a band of opinionated FinTech influencers do when they have seen and heard ‘enough’? Well they have a podcast.

How do you handle being asked to join a panel ‘because we need a woman’?

What examples can you give of what men can do to be more supportive?

How have you handled the times in your work life when you have been ‘complicit’ and acted out of survival instead of speaking up?

Have you ever had to turn down business – because the person involved ‘made you uncomfortable?’

What can women do – to support ourselves?

How can we get men to stop ‘mansplaining’ and start listening?

Please tune in!

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Mon, 12 Feb 2018 08:00:28 +0000Michaela Merzhttps://michaelamerz.org/go/events/tax-technology-webcast-series/Digital technology is transforming the way in which organisations manage their tax affairs. Are you curious about what the future holds? Sign up now for our upcoming series of tax technology webcasts.

Managing tax and customs internationally has become a real handful. Especially with growing regulatory and cost pressure increasing the workload involved but making it harder to get additional staff. The latest tax technology can relieve your tax people from mechanical tasks so they can focus on the critical elements of their jobs.

The challenges are familiar but evolving all the time. The solutions are very new. To help you keep track and see just how easily and cost-efficiently it can work, we’ll be holding a series of webcasts on different tax-related issues and the new technologies designed to address them. Get on board now to make sure you’re on the winning side of the tax technology revolution.

Over the next six months we will be offering monthly webcasts to help you get up to speed on the following topics:

Imports/exports

International collaboration

VAT reconciliations

Managing VAT refunds

Monitoring tax risk

Your hosts – and experts

This webcast series ist hosted by Ilona Paakkala and Jochen Richner. They lead the Indirect and Corporate Tax Technology groups respectively and have over 10 years of experience in technology. For different webcasts, they will be joined by subject matter experts from different areas, for example in Data Analytics, reconciliation or other specific solutions.

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Fri, 02 Feb 2018 15:02:05 +0000zcarsthemehttps://jinx.co.uk/go/industry/going-live/We’ve been looking at testing out live streaming for years, actually. One of our most treasured schemes way back in the day would have involved live streaming the entirety of principal photography for one of our movies, with four cameras set up in different areas that you could skip between. Always thought that would be fascinating. That was in 2009 or so, when the technology was in its infancy; the idea presented massive of technical challenges, but we were paired up with another brilliant company who had the tech and needed to test it. Unfortunately, that other company folded and the idea fell apart.

Nowadays, of course, live streaming is much less of a novelty and also presents much less of a technical challenge. So, with that in mind, our first tiny toe-dip into the live streaming waters will take place next Tuesday (6th Feb 2018) at 2.30pm GMT. It will consist of me (Pat) answering any questions that people can chuck at me about horror, screenwriting, filmmaking or the live shows. Or, alternatively, if not a single human being connects to the feed it will consist of me rapping in a Batman costume. Either way, expect loads of technical glitches and nothing slick whatsoever. It’s a bloody test.

Anyway, it’s going to happen whether you like it or not. I’ll be here, anyway. Be lovely if you felt like joining me.

EDIT: Well, there were some technical issues which led to a jump to Facebook, but it happened anyway :)

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Fri, 02 Feb 2018 10:30:53 +0000Vinayhttps://thakurvinay.wordpress.com/go/others/ha-between-windows-and-linux/https://blogbyrainer.wordpress.com/go/uncategorized/ibm-collaboration-webcasts/
Fri, 02 Feb 2018 06:58:00 +0000Rainer Brandlhttps://blogbyrainer.wordpress.com/go/uncategorized/ibm-collaboration-webcasts/In collaboration with DNUG ( a great German Notes User Group – http://dnug.de/ !! ) there are a lot of extremely interesting webcasts.This week there has been the webcast about “Road to Connections Pink” ( held by Martti Garden and Matthias Schneider), which gave a very good overview about the transition of IBM Connections 6 to “Pink”. You can download the presentation ( it´s in German ) here: https://goo.gl/96jRFEYou can find an overview of all webcasts on the event page of DNUG:

So feel free to register for those events and take a look behind the scenes ;-)

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Mon, 29 Jan 2018 12:44:43 +0000Dan Toomeyhttps://mindovermessaging.com/go/events/integration-down-under-is-up-running/For years now Integration Monday has been faithfully giving us webinars almost every week. There have been some outstanding sessions from international leaders in the integration space including MVPs, members of the Microsoft product team, and other community members. For the Asia Pacific community, however, it has always been a challenge to participate in the live sessions due to the unfriendly time zone. (I certainly know what a struggle it was to present my own session last October at 4:30am!) Even from the listener’s perspective, it is usually nicer to be able to join a live webinar and ask questions rather than to consume the recordings afterwards.

Thanks to the initiative of veteran MVP Bill Chesnut (aka “BizTalk Bill”) and the sponsorship of his employer SixPivot, we now have a brand new webinar series starting up in a friendlier time slot for our APAC community! Integration Down Under is launching its inaugural webinar session on Thursday, 8th February at 7:00pm AEST. You can register for this free event here.

This initial session will introduce the leaders and allow each of us to present as very short talk on a chosen topic:

There are already more than twenty registrations even though the link has been live for only a few days. I hope that this is a good sign of the interest within the community!

Feeling really fortunate to be part of this initiative, and looking forward to delivering my intro to Event Grid talk! It will be a slightly scaled down version of what I presented at the Sydney Tech Summit back in November. Hope to see you there!

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Thu, 25 Jan 2018 07:00:50 +0000Michaela Merzhttps://michaelamerz.org/go/tax-knowledge/9243/We are delighted to invite you to the next in the series of PwC’s Indirect Tax global webcasts.

Date: January 30, 2018Time: 1:00 – 2:00 pm GMT (8 Eastern)

India’s GST went into effect 1 July 2017. So how are businesses managing compliance? Join PwC’s 30 January webcast: http://bit.ly/India-GST

Indian goods and services tax (GST) Act came into effect on 1 July 2017. GST replaced many indirect taxes (ITX) in India but did it make ITX simpler and easier for your business? Did it make it easier to comply and reduce compliance costs?

What next on GST? What do we expect now? All India mandatory implementation of E-way bill with effect from 1st Feb 2018 – will it be easy or cumbersome? How do we get prepared on anti-profiteering with notices already being issued by authorities?

In this webcast our panel of ITX specialists will discuss what businesses should expect now and what preparation needs to be done on aspects such as anti profiteering etc. There will also be the opportunity to ask the panel questions during the live webcast.